Dewey RobinsonFilmography

Skipalong Rosenbloom

Actors: "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom, Max Baer, Jackie Coogan, Fuzzy Knight, Hillary Brooke

Synopsis: Originally slated for release by Eagle Lion, Skipalong Rosenbloom purchased by United Artists -- who gave it a cursory theatrical release before selling the film to television. As it turned out, TV was the appropriate medium for this heavy-handed satire of video westerns. Former boxing champ Maxie Rosenbloom Read More

Dallas

Actors: Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey, Leif Erickson, Barbara Payton

Synopsis: With Dallas, Gary Cooper revived his long-dormant association with westerns. Cooper plays ex-Confederate officer Blayde Hollister, who rides into Dallas in search of the men who killed his family and stole his land. Because he is considered to be an outlaw by the authorities, Hollister is Read More

Buccaneer's Girl

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Phillip Friend, Robert Douglas, Elsa Lanchester, Andrea King

Synopsis: The Buccaneer's Girl of the title, played by Yvonne de Carlo, is Deborah McCoy, an entertainer who's been around a bit. While visiting New Orleans, Deborah falls in love with aristocratic Frederick Baptiste (Philip Friend), who turns out to be a pirate. Baptiste is basically a decent fellow: his Read More

Father of the Bride

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Don Taylor, Billie Burke

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy received an Oscar nomination for his performance in this classic comedy. Stanley T. Banks (Tracy) is a securely middle-class lawyer whose daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) announces that she's going to marry her beau Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor). From that point on, everything in Read More

Dark City

Actors: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors, Dean Jagger, Don DeFore

Synopsis: Though he had previously appeared in David Bradley's film adaptation of Julius Caesar, Dark City marked Charlton Heston's first role in a major Hollywood production. Danny (Heston) and his pals Augie (Jack Webb), Soldier (Henry Morgan), and Barney (Ed Begley Sr.) set up a poker game to take Arthur Read More

Storm Warning

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, Steve Cochran, Hugh Sanders

Synopsis: In Storm Warning, Ginger Rogers stars as a model visiting relatives in an unnamed small town. She happens to witness the beating death of a man at the hands of the KKK. Rogers soon discovers that the whole town is controlled by this vigilante group, and that her loutish brother-in-law Steve Cochran Read More

Right Cross

Actors: June Allyson, Dick Powell, Ricardo Montalban, Lionel Barrymore, Teresa Celli

Synopsis: Right Cross stars Dick Powell as cynical sportswriter Rick Gavery and Powell's wife June Allyson as boxing manager Pat O'Malley. Subbing for her incapacitated father (Lionel Barrymore), Pat grooms prizefighter Johnny Monterez (Ricardo Montalban) for the championship. Johnny holds a grudge against Read More

Paid in Full

Actors: Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, Diana Lynn, Eve Arden, Ray Collins

Synopsis: Lizabeth Scott and Diana Lynn are both effectively cast against type in Paid in Full. Scott plays Jane Langley, the spectacularly self-sacrificial older sister of selfish, reckless Nancy Langley (Lynn). Though she is in love with Bill Prentice (Robert Cummings), Jane gives him up to Nancy. And Read More

At War With the Army

Actors: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Polly Bergen, Mike Kellin, Jimmie Dundee, Dick Stabile

Synopsis: Though At War With the Army was the third film appearance of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, it was the team's first starring vehicle. A pattern is set herein for all the Martin-Lewis flicks to follow: Martin plays a self-assured romeo, forever bursting into song, while Lewis is a hopeless screw-up Read More

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

Actors: Betty Grable, Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee, Olga San Juan, Sterling Holloway

Synopsis: Preston Sturges' final American film was generally conceded to be a disaster in 1949; even star Betty Grable publicly bad-mouthed the finished product. When seen today, Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, while no classic, seems a lot better than it did five decades ago. Grable plays a western Read More

Tension

Actors: Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan, Tom D'Andrea, Lloyd Gough

Synopsis: Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart) has a problem that he won't admit to: his wife, Claire (Audrey Totter), wants more fun and excitement out of life than the quiet, soft-spoken pharmacist can give her. So she steps out on him regularly, something that Warren refuses to recognize until the day she Read More

My Friend Irma

Actors: John Lund, Diana Lynn, Don DeFore, Marie Wilson, Dean Martin

Synopsis: My Friend Irma was supposed to be a straightforward adaptation of the popular radio sitcom of the same name. The film's focus therefore was supposed to be on air-headed Irma Peterson (Marie Wilson), her levelheaded roommate, Jane Stacy (Diana Lynn, taking over from the radio series' Cathy Lewis) Read More

Tough Assignment

Actors: Marjorie Steele, Steve Brodie, Marc Lawrence, Ben Welden

Synopsis: William "One Take" Beaudine warms the director's chair for Lippert Pictures' Tough Assignment. The film is essentially a combination western and contemporary crime yarn, with Don Barry cast as Dan Reilly, a frontier journalist. With the help of his wife Margie (Marjorie Steele), Dan tries to get Read More

Neptune's Daughter

Actors: Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn

Synopsis: Esther Williams and Red Skelton share equal screen time for once in the MGM Technicolor musical Neptune's Daughter. The title character is, of course, Williams, here cast as Eve Barrett, a bathing-suit manufacturer (and sometimes model). Skelton plays Jack Spratt, the masseur at a fancy polo club Read More

Ma and Pa Kettle

Actors: Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, Richard Long, Meg Randall, Patricia Alphin

Synopsis: The title couple and their enormous brood of bumpkins made their movie debut in the film version of Betty McDonald's humorous book The Egg and I (1947) where they appeared as supporting characters. Audiences found them funny and so the characters got their own long-running series of B movies. Ma Read More

Hellfire

Actors: William "Wild Bill" Elliott, Marie Windsor, Forrest Tucker, Jim Davis, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Western star William Elliot always insisted that his idol was silent-film cowboy William S. Hart. Elliot's Hellfire, then, can be seen as his tribute to the 1916 Bill Hart classic Hell's Hinges. Elliot plays a hard-bitten frontier gambler whose life is saved by a preacher. When the preacher dies Read More

I Walk Alone

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Wendell Corey, Kristine Miller

Synopsis: On the run from the cops, bootleggers Frankie Madison (Burt Lancaster) and Noll Turner (Kirk Douglas), find themselves racing up to an enormous roadblock. The two split up, agreeing that if one was caught, the other would operate their nightclub and save half the profits for his partner. The Read More

Let's Live Again

Synopsis: This comedy focuses on a nuclear scientist who believes that his dead brother has been reincarnated as a dog. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

River Lady

Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Rod Cameron, Helena Carter, Lloyd Gough

Synopsis: Yvonne DeCarlo dons 19th century "adventuress" garb once more in River Lady. This time she's a 19th century gambling queen, in charge of a profitable Mississippi riverboat casino. DeCarlo falls in love with logger Rod Cameron; when he won't succumb to her charms, she tries to buy his affections Read More

The Bride Goes Wild

Actors: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Hume Cronyn, Una Merkel

Synopsis: In this funny tale of deception and romantic fireworks, a rather prissy New England school marm finally gets a chance to achieve her dream and become a commercial artist when she is hired to illustrate the beloved "Uncle Bump's" latest children's book. She adores Bump's earlier works and is Read More

The Checkered Coat

Actors: Tom Conway, Noreen Nash, Hurd Hatfield, James Seay, Garry Owen

Synopsis: In this crime drama a psychiatrist tries to help a psycho patient who loses consciousness after he kills someone. When the doctor provides the patient with a letter that explains his problem, he inadvertently implicates himself in the crimes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Fighting Mad

Actors: Virginia Belmont, Paul Bryar, Charles Cane, Roberl Conway, Patricia Dane

Synopsis: Joe Palooka, Ham Fisher's famed comic-strip fighter, risks his life to clear the name of his manager in this series entry. In this episode, Palooka is blinded during a fight. Although surgery restores his vision, the doctors strongly caution him not to fight again for at least a year. Meanwhile Read More

Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven

Actors: Guy Madison, Diana Lynn, James Dunn, Lionel Stander, Florence Bates

Synopsis: Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven deserves a historical footnote as director William Castle's only comedy western. Future Wild Bill Hickok star Guy Madison plays Eddie Taylor, a lonesome cowboy who falls in love with city-gal Perry Dunkin (Diana Lynn). The couple "meets cute" in Brooklyn, where the two Read More

Stallion Road

Actors: Alexis Smith, Zachary Scott, Peggy Knudsen, Pat Brady

Synopsis: Veterinarian Ronald Reagan contracts anthrax from treating diseased cows in this horsey melodrama from Warner Bros. In fact, Reagan's dutiful Dr. Larry Hanrahan is so busy with the cows that he completely ignores a summons from lady horse breeder Rory Teller (Alexis Smith) to treat her Read More

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock

Actors: Al Bridge, Harold Lloyd, Georgia Caine, Frances Ramsden, Raymond Walburn, Jimmy Conlin, Franklin Pangborn, Margaret Hamilton, Edgar Kennedy

Synopsis: Absent from films since 1938 (except as producer of a brace of RKO Radio features), silent-screen comedy favorite Harold Lloyd returned before the cameras in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. The project began as a labor of love between Lloyd and the brilliant, innovative producer/writer/director Preston Sturges Read More

I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now

Actors: Lenore Aubert, Truman Bradley, Harry V. Cheshire, George Cleveland, Eddie Dunn

Synopsis: I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now is the heavily laundered musical biopic of sentimental songwriter Joe E. Howard. As played by Mark Stevens (whose singing voice was dubbed by Buddy Clark), Howard is a humble 19th century organ salesman who rises to Broadway fame as the composer of maudlin ballads Read More

The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap

Actors: Bud Abbott, William Ching, Bill Clauson, George Cleveland, Edmund Cobb

Synopsis: The Abbott & Costello western spoof The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap is predicated on an actual Montana law of the 19th century, which dictated that if a man killed another in a gun duel, that man was responsible for the care and support of the victim's family. The film gets under way with an Read More

The Gangster

Actors: Barry Sullivan, Belita, Joan Lorring, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis: Having struck gold with the previous season's Dillinger, the King Brothers returned to Monogram as producers of The Gangster. Adapted by Daniel Fuchs from his own novel Low Company, the film stars Barry Sullivan as flint-faced racketeer Shubunka. Shown to be a product of the slums, Shubunka spends Read More

Fiesta

Actors: Esther Williams, Akim Tamiroff, Ricardo Montalban, John Carroll, Mary Astor

Synopsis: Esther Williams moves from the swimming pool to the bull ring in this musical drama. Antonio Morales (Fortunio Bonanova) was once a champion bullfighter; now in retirement, Antonio and his wife (Mary Astor) have high hopes that their son Mario (Ricardo Montalban) will follow in his father's Read More

Dishonored Lady

Actors: Hedy Lamarr, Dennis O'Keefe, John Loder, Morris Carnovsky, William Lundigan

Synopsis: In this drama, Madeleine Damien (Hedy Lamarr) is a successful magazine editor with a free-spirited private life, but a number of failed relationships and years of burning the candle at both ends have taken their toll and Madeleine is suicidal and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her Read More

Fear

Actors: Peter Cookson, Warren William, Anne Gwynne, James B. Cardwell, Nestor Paiva

Synopsis: Peter Cookson, Monogram's answer to Jimmy Stewart, stars in Fear, also known as Black Tower Cookson plays a medical student who becomes involved in a murder. Anne Gwynne is the girl who doesn't completely trust Cookson, but helps him out anyway. Also appearing as one of those oh-too-helpful types Read More

The Missing Lady

Synopsis: The Shadow (Richmond) investigates the murder of an art dealer with his only clue being a stolen jade statuette. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Black Market Babies

Actors: Ralph Morgan, Kane Richmond, Teala Loring, Marjorie Hoshelle, George Meeker

Synopsis: The title tells all in the Monogram "expose" Black Market Babies. Alcoholic physician Dr. Jordan (Ralph Morgan) joins forces with gangster Eddie Condon (Kane Richmond) and shyster lawyer Anthony Marco (George Meeker) in a crooked adoption racket. Coercing unwed mothers to give up their babies for Read More

Suspense

Actors: Belita, Barry Sullivan, Bonita Granville, Albert Dekker, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: If Republic's skating star Vera Hruba Ralston could go "dramatic", so too could Monogram's skating star Belita. Produced by the enterprising King Brothers, Suspense takes place in an ice-skating emporium owned by Frank Leonard (Albert Dekker). No-good heel Joe Morgan (Barry Sullivan) not only Read More

Mr. Hex

Actors: Jimmy Aubrey, Danny Beck, Billy Benedict, Sammy Cohen, Gabriel Dell

Synopsis: Mr. Hex was the first Bowery Boys epic in which the goofy Sach (Huntz Hall) is given superhuman powers. Hypnotized by a carnival magician (Ian Keith), Sach becomes a powerful boxer. Head Bowery boy Slip (Leo Gorcey) parlays this talent into a lucrative ring career for Sach, culminating in the Read More

The Mighty McGurk

Actors: Morris Ankrum, Edward Arnold, Wallace Beery, Charles Judels, Aline MacMahon

Synopsis: It's The Champ all over again, with Wallace Beery as a down-and-out prizefighter and Dean Stockwell as the small boy whom he adopts. Mighty McGurk also borrows from Beery's earlier The Bowery (33) by placing its story in that New York neighborhood in 1900. The final echo from Wally Beery's movie Read More

Slightly Scandalous

Actors: Fred Brady, Paula Drew, Sheila Ryan, Walter Catlett, Isabelita

Synopsis: Disparate twin brothers find themselves involved in romantic mayhem when their respective girl friends get them confused in this musical comedy. One of the brothers is an aggressive, ambitious and gregarious television producer; the other is an introverted insurance salesman with few long-term Read More

Two Sisters from Boston

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, June Allyson, Lauritz Melchior, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lawford

Synopsis: By 1946, MGM's musical output was in the hands of two men: the incisive, progressive Arthur Freed, and the sentimental, old-fashioned Joe Pasternak. It was Pasternak who held the reins on Two Sisters from Boston, a period piece set in New York. June Allyson and Kathryn Grayson arrive fresh from Read More

Behind the Mask

Actors: Kane Richmond, George Chandler, Pierre Watkin, Dorothea Kent

Synopsis: Crooked newspaper columnist Jeff Mann (James Cardwell), who apparently was blackmailing half the criminal gangs in the city, is murdered in his own office, and a police officer is killed the same night in the alley outside the newspaper's building -- and the prime suspect is the Shadow, the Read More

Idea Girl

Actors: Jess Barker, Julie Bishop, George Dolenz, Alan Mowbray

Synopsis: The Idea Girl in this Universal mini-musical is songplugger Pat O'Rourke (played by Julie Bishop, formerly Jacqueline Wells). Hoping to hit the big time, Pat pitches the notion of an amateur song-writing contest. Her zany publicity-seeking efforts cause nothing but grief for a group of Read More

The Bells of St. Mary's

Actors: Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Henry Travers, Ruth Donnelly, William Gargan, Rhys Williams

Synopsis: In this follow-up to director Leo McCarey's Going My Way (1944), Bing Crosby repeats his Oscar-winning characterization of happy-go-lucky priest Father O'Malley. The good father is sent to help out financially strapped St. Mary's Academy, a parochial school presided over by lovely nun Sister Read More

Pardon My Past

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Marguerite Chapman, Akim Tamiroff, William Demarest, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: A case of mistaken identity leads to hilarity in this comedy. Eddie (Fred MacMurray) and Chuck (William Demarest) are a pair of GIs who've just been sprung from the service and plan to open a mink ranch in Wisconsin. No sooner do they arrive in the Cheese State than one Jim Arnold (Akim Tamiroff) Read More

There Goes Kelly

Actors: Jackie Moran, Wanda McKay, Sidney Miller, Ralph Sanford, Dewey Robinson

Synopsis: There Goes Kelly is a followup of sorts to Monogram's 1943 comedy Here Comes Kelly, with Jackie Moran taking over for Eddie Quillan as the title character. In this one, the pugnacious Jimmy Kelly (Moran) is a page boy at a big-time radio station. When the station's star vocalist is murdered Read More

Incendiary Blonde

Actors: Betty Hutton, Arturo de Cordova, Albert Dekker, Charlie Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald

Synopsis: Incendiary Blonde is a highly entertaining if historically suspect biopic of "Queen of the Nightclubs" Texas Guinan. As played (or overplayed) by Betty Hutton, Guinan is a hoydenish Texas gal whose showbiz career gets under way when she joins a Wild West show in 1909. A favorite with male patrons Read More

Hollywood and Vine

Actors: James Ellison, Wanda McKay, June Clyde, Ralph Morgan, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Hollywood and Vine is set in a drugstore located at the intersection of the title. James Ellison plays a successful screenwriter who likes to do his research first-hand. Assigned to write a film about Hollywood hopefuls, Ellison gets a job as a drugstore soda jerk. Wanda McKay plays Daisy, a Read More

Fashion Model

Actors: Robert Lowery, Marjorie Weaver, Dorothy Christy

Synopsis: Surprisingly, leading lady Marjorie Weaver isn't the Fashion Model in this tongue-in-cheek Monogram meller. When two employees of a clothing factory are murdered, the shadow of suspicion falls upon lowly stock boy Robert Lowery. One of the victims (Lorna Gray) was the titular model, whom Lowery Read More

The Great John L.

Actors: Greg McClure, Linda Darnell, Barbara Britton, J.M. Kerrigan, Lee Sullivan, Otto Kruger

Synopsis: Greg McClure stars as legendary boxer John L. Sullivan in this screen biography of the famous fighter. Known as "The Boston Strong Boy," Sullivan was a bare-knuckle brawler who rose from humble circumstances to become the world's heavyweight champion from 1882 to 1892. While Sullivan was a skilled Read More

Scarlet Street

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay, Rosalind Ivan

Synopsis: Masterfully directed by Fritz Lang, Scarlet Street is a bleak film in which an ordinary man succumbs first to vice and then to murder. Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) is a lonely man married to a nagging wife. Painting is the only thing that brings him joy. Cross meets Kitty (Joan Bennett) Read More

The Lady Confesses

Actors: Mary Beth Hughes, Hugh Beaumont, Edmund MacDonald, Claudia Drake, Emmett Vogan

Synopsis: The title The Lady Confesses is slightly misleading, since it's the hero of the film is accused of murder. On the eve of his marriage to Vicki McGuire (Mary Beth Hughes), Larry Craig (Hugh Beaumont) discovers that his first wife Norma (Barbara Slater), long missing and presumed dead, is very much Read More

Those Endearing Young Charms

Actors: Robert Young, Laraine Day, Ann Harding, Marc Cramer, Anne Jeffreys

Synopsis: Robert Young stars as a WW2 pilot named Hank, who accompanies his pal Jerry (Bill Williams, in his film debut) on a furlough. Jerry introduces his girlfriend Helen (Laraine Day) to Hank, a notorious and unrepentent womanizer. In a twinkling, Hank tries to steal Helen away from Jerry-but succeeds Read More

Dillinger

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Anne Jeffreys, Lawrence Tierney, Marc Lawrence

Synopsis: Dillinger, the was the ninth effort from the enterprising King Brothers, and their most financially successful film to date. Lawrence Tierney became an overnight cult favorite with his gritty portrayal of maverick bank robber John Dillinger, though top billing is bestowed upon Edmund Lowe as gang Read More

Timber Queen

Actors: Mary Beth Hughes, June Havoc, Sheldon Leonard, George E. Stone

Synopsis: Timber Queen is another of Pine-Thomas' rugged low-budget adventure films of the 1940s, most of which (like this one) starred Richard Arlen. It all begins when Russ (Arlen), a former Army pilot, comes home after a physical discharge. He befriends Elaine (Mary Beth Hughes), the widow of an Army Read More

Murder, My Sweet

Actors: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger, Mike Mazurki

Synopsis: One-time movie crooner Dick Powell literally turned his career around in the 1944 film noir Murder My Sweet. Powell stars as Phillip Marlowe, the hard-boiled private detective antihero created by novelist Raymond Chandler. Hired by hulking, psychotic Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to locate Moose's Read More

Trocadero

Actors: Rosemary Lane, Johnny Downs, Ralph Morgan, Dick Purcell, Sheldon Leonard

Synopsis: In this musical, two young people inherit their foster father's nightclub. The joint teeters on the brink of bankruptcy until they bring in exciting jazz music and entertaining acts ranging from comedy to cartoonists. Songs include: "Shoo-Shoo Baby," "The Music Goes 'Round and Around," "Roundabout Read More

When Strangers Marry

Actors: Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum, Neil Hamilton, Lou Lubin

Synopsis: Betrayed is the reissue title for the classic melodrama When Strangers Marry. In her third film, Kim Hunter plays a waitress who comes to New York to meet her husband Dean Jagger. Kim's marriage was a whirlwind affair, and as a result she barely knows her husband. She soon discovers that Jagger Read More

Hail the Conquering Hero

Actors: Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines, William Demarest, Bill Edwards, Raymond Walburn

Synopsis: It took nerve for writer/director Preston Sturges to lampoon the whole concept of hero worship in the middle of World War II, but once more Sturges' oddball sense of taste and propriety paid off at the box office in Hail the Conquering Hero. Eddie Bracken plays the son of a World War I Marine hero Read More

The Great Moment

Actors: Joel McCrea, Betty Field, Harry Carey, William Demarest, Louis Jean Heydt, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: After producing, writing and directing one hit film after another, Preston Sturges finally misfired with the biopic The Great Moment. Sturges was always fascinated with the saga of W.T.G. Morton, the 19th century Boston dentist who, after inventing the first truly effective anesthesia, was forced Read More

Alaska

Synopsis: This '40s film (based upon a Jack London story) is set in Alaska's gold rush days and revolves around the dilemma faced by a man wrongfully accused of murder whose future depends upon his ability to solve the crime. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Chinese Cat

Actors: Sidney Toler, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland

Synopsis: Charlie Chan's second mystery for Poverty Row company Monogram, The Chinese Cat is one of the inscrutable detective's better efforts. Director Phil Rosen keeps things moving at a reasonably expedient pace -- especially for a Monogram programmer -- and although the denouement is no big surprise Read More

Wilson

Actors: Alexander Knox, Charles Coburn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Thomas Mitchell, Ruth Nelson, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Producer Darryl F. Zanuck had high hopes that Wilson would immortalize him in the manner that Gone With the Wind did for David O. Selznick. The notion of bringing the life story of Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States, to the big screen was a labor of love for Zanuck, and Read More

The Woman of the Town

Synopsis: Originally, producer Harry Sherman's Woman of the Town was slated for Paramount release, but that studio was overloaded with product, so the film was deferred to United Artists. Nonetheless, the finished product has the "look" of a Paramount, right down to the presence of character actor Albert Read More

Redhead from Manhattan

Actors: Lupe Velez, Michael Duane, Tim Ryan, Gerald Mohr, Lillian Yarbo

Synopsis: Substantially, Lupe Velez' Columbia vehicle Redhead from Manhattan was the same as her previous RKO starrers-boisterous, unsubtle, and immensely profitable. La Lupe plays a dual role, as twin sisters named Rita and Elaine. Escaping from a torpedoed ship, Rita shows up in New York, where she takes Read More

The Ghost Ship

Actors: Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett, Lawrence Tierney, Ben Bard, Edmund Glover

Synopsis: RKO horror producer Val Lewton dished up seven reels of brooding psychological terror with The Ghost Ship. Richard Dix stars as the ship's captain, a tortured soul who teeters on the verge of madness. Seaman Russell Wade notices the captain's deterioration, but his warnings are dismissed by the Read More

The Seventh Victim

Actors: Kim Hunter, Tom Conway, Hugh Beaumont, Isabel Jewell, Jean Brooks, Evelyn Brent, Erford Gage

Synopsis: Producer Val Lewton once more utilized leftover Magnificent Ambersons sets for his psychological horror piece The Seventh Victim. Kim Hunter arrives in New York's Greenwich Village in search of her errant sister Jean Brooks. Gradually, the naive Hunter is drawn into a strange netherworld of Satan Read More

The Talk of the Town

Actors: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman, Edgar Buchanan, Glenda Farrell, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: George Stevens' Talk of the Town is a quick-witted comedy driven by wonderful performances by Cary Grant, Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur. Michael Lightcap (Colman) is a stuffy law professor in line to a Supreme Court appointment, who is spending the summer at the house of schoolteacher Nora Read More

The Big Street

Actors: Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Agnes Moorehead, Barton MacLane, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Lucille Ball delivers the finest dramatic performance of her career in this satisfying adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Big Street. Ball is cast as Gloria, aka "Your Highness," the vain and thoroughly selfish star attraction of gangster Case Ables' (Barton MacLaine) New York nightclub. Henry Fonda Read More

Tales of Manhattan

Actors: Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton

Synopsis: Tales of Manhattan is a sumptuous multipart film centered around a formal tailcoat. The coat is specially designed for stage actor Charles Boyer, who wears it during a rendezvous with his lady friend (Rita Hayworth). The lady's husband (Thomas Mitchell) shoots Boyer, thus the tailcoat is damaged Read More

'Neath the Brooklyn Bridge

Synopsis: The East Side Kids, featuring Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell and Huntz Hall, star in this spirited blend of action and comedy. The kids come to the rescue of a hysterical young girl who is discovered in the apartment with a murdered man. Convinced she's not the killer, the guys hide her as they comb the Read More

The Palm Beach Story

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, William Demarest

Synopsis: As for the opening reels, the principal motivating factor is money. After a deliberately confusing pre-credit sequence (not explained until the film's punch line), Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) are married. "And so they lived happily ever after," exults a title Read More

Isle of Missing Men

Synopsis: By Monogram standards, the cast of Isle of Missing Men was Academy Award calibre. John Howard and Gilbert Roland head a group of prisoners who try to escape from an island prison colony. Leading lady Helen Gilbert is willing to wait for her beloved Howard, but looks askance when he participates in Read More

Two Yanks in Trinidad

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Brian Donlevy, Janet Blair, Roger Clark, Donald MacBride

Synopsis: The Two Yanks in Trinidad are gangsters Tim Reardon (Pat O'Brien) and Vince Barrows (Brian Donlevy), who split up over a disagreement and join the army, Tim to escape Vince's wrath and Vince to get his lunch-hooks on Tim. Both of our heroes run afoul of Army discipline and protocol in general, and Read More

Rubber Racketeers

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Rochelle Hudson, Barbara Read, Milburn Stone

Synopsis: The fourth production from the enterprising King Brothers, Rubber Racketeers drew its inspiration from late-breaking headlines. When wartime rationing kicks in, rubber suddenly is at a premium, resulting in a brisk black market in bootlegged rubber tires. Patriotic defense plant worker Bill Barry (Bill Henry Read More

Juke Girl

Actors: Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan, Richard Whorf, Gene Lockhart, Betty Brewer

Synopsis: Director Curtis Bernhardt hadn't wanted to make Juke Girl, but he was under contract to Warner Bros. and had to tow the line lest he find himself drawing Unemployment. One of Bernhardt's gripes against the film is that it starred Ronald Reagan, whom he considered an "unimportant" screen Read More

Jail House Blues

Synopsis: In this musical, a convict finds his life calling after a prison show is staged and he discovers a talent for stage production. He becomes obsessed with it until his sentence ends. Once outside, he begins recruiting new talent for the prison. Later his effort pays off and he is finally Broadway Read More

Sullivan's Travels

Actors: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Robert Warwick, Porter Hall

Synopsis: In Preston Sturges' classic comedy of Depression-era America, filmmaker John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), fed up with directing profitable comedies like "Ants in Your Plants of 1939," is consumed with the desire to make a serious social statement in his upcoming film, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" Read More

Sing for Your Supper

Actors: Jinx Falkenburg, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Bert Gordon, Eve Arden, Don Beddoe

Synopsis: Next to Ann Miller, few Columbia contractees made more B musicals than Jinx Falkenberg. In Sing for Your Supper, Falkenberg is cast as Evelyn Palmer, the gorgeous proprietor of a dime-a-dance emporium. Bandleader Larry Hays (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) is the official owner of the joint, but when he Read More

Come Live with Me

Actors: James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, Ian Hunter, Veree Teasdale, Donald Meek

Synopsis: James Stewart's last Hollywood film before entering military service, Come Live with Me teams Stewart with the hauntingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr plays a wealthy Austrian emigree, in love with a married American publisher. The girl must quickly find an American husband or she'll be deported. Read More

A Girl, a Guy and A Gob

Actors: George Murphy, Edmond O'Brien, Henry Travers, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: The girl is stenographer Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball); the guy is her boss, stuffy young shipping magnate Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien); and the gob is a brash sailor known as Coffee Cup (George Murphy). Not surprisingly, the plot involves the efforts by the self-effacing Stephen and the Read More

Lady for a Night

Actors: Joan Blondell, John Wayne, Philip Merivale, Ray Middleton, Blanche Yurka, Edith Barrett

Synopsis: The unlikely combination of John Wayne and Joan Blondell adds a bit of vinegar and spice to the so-so costume drama Lady for a Night. Blondell is cast as Jenny Blake, owner of the Memphis Belle-not a WW2 bomber, but a gambling ship moored just outside New Orleans. Jenny's partner and erstwhile Read More

I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby

Actors: Broderick Crawford, Peggy Moran, Johnny Downs, Warren Hymer, John Sutton

Synopsis: Universal Studios had their "B" musicals down to a science in the 1940s. All that was needed was a cast of talented contractees, four or five modest production numbers, and a title based on a popular song hit. In I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby, Broderick Crawford plays a sentimental Read More

Rangers of Fortune

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Albert Dekker, Gilbert Roland, Patricia Morison

Synopsis: Fred MacMurray stars as a US Army misfit who, with pals Albert Dekker and Gilbert Roland, roam the west in search of adventure. Arriving in a small town, they befriend the elderly newspaper editor (Arthur Allen) and his young granddaughter (Betty Brewer). The trio learns that the community is Read More

The Sky Bandits

Synopsis: In this adventure, the final entry in the "Renfrew of the Mounties" series, the intrepid RCMP officer and his girl friend head for the Yukon to look for stolen planes carrying gold shipments. There they find themselves faced with a death ray that has been invented by a scientist who has been Read More

Dance, Girl, Dance

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Virginia Field

Synopsis: Based on a story by Vicki Baum (of Grand Hotel) fame, Dance, Girl Dance finds innocent young Judy (Maureen O'Hara) journeying to the Big Apple in hopes of gaining fame as a classical dancer. Instead she ends up as the "stooge" for raucous strip-tease artist Bubbles (Lucille Ball), who attempts to Read More

Diamond Frontier

Actors: Victor McLaglen, John Loder, Anne Nagel, Philip Dorn, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: Characterized by some critics as a "South African western", Diamond Frontier stars Victor McLaglen as ruthless diamond hunter Regan. The villain's reign of terror as he searches for the precious gems is checked by Charles Clayton (John Loder), freshly escaped from a brutal penal colony. A wild Read More

Tin Pan Alley

Actors: Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Jack Oakie, John Payne, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: To quell the rumors that musical stars Alice Faye and Betty Grable detested each other (actually they were fast friends, if not close buddies), 20th Century-Fox cast both ladies in their 1940 "inventory" musical Tin Pan Alley. Set in the years just prior to and during WW1, the film casts Faye and Read More

Christmas in July

Actors: Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, Alexander Carr, William Demarest

Synopsis: This modest Preston Sturges comedy stars Dick Powell as an office clerk dreaming of better things and Ellen Drew as his more pragmatic girlfriend. Powell convinces himself that his fortune will be made if he can win a slogan contest sponsored by a coffee company. Powell's contribution: "If you Read More

Three Faces West

Actors: John Wayne, Sigrid Gurie, Charles Coburn, Spencer Charters, Helen MacKellar

Synopsis: The Refugee was the original release title for the offbeat John Wayne vehicle Three Faces West. Wayne, Sigrid Gurie and Charles Coburn are starred as John Philips, Leni Braun and Leni's father Dr. Braun, who like so many other victims of the Depression are forced to move bag and baggage from the Read More

The Great McGinty

Actors: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff, Allyn Joslyn, William Demarest

Synopsis: The moral of Preston Sturges' first directorial effort The Great McGinty seems to be: If you're a crook, stay a crook, because honesty will get ya every time. Brian Donlevy plays Dan McGinty, a Chicago hobo who is hired by local political bosses as a "professional voter", casting ballots under a Read More

Strange Cargo

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Ian Hunter, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas

Synopsis: "Strange" is right: this mystical MGM melodrama has to be the oddest of the studio's Clark Gable-Joan Crawford vehicles. When eight prisoners escape from a New Guinea penal colony, they are picked up by a sloop commandeered by another escapee named Verne (Gable) and his trollop girl friend Julie Read More

$1,000 a Touchdown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye, Eric Blore, Susan Hayward, John Hartley

Synopsis: This film should have been a press agent's dream: Hollywood's two greatest "big mouths," Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye, together in the same picture. Brown and Raye play a show business couple who inherit a near-bankrupt college. They decide to build up the school's scraggly football team in hopes Read More

Navy Secrets

Actors: Fay Wray, Grant Withers, Dewey Robinson, William Von Brincken, Craig Reynolds

Synopsis: A federal agent and a petty Naval officer are both investigating the theft of top-secret defense plans. Since neither one is aware that the other is working on the case, each considers the other to be the prime suspect. They end up getting romantic and catching the real spies. ~ Steve Huey, All Read More

Forged Passport

Actors: Paul Kelly, June Lang, Lyle Talbot, Billy Gilbert, Cliff Nazarro

Synopsis: In this actioner, a U.S. border patrol agent stationed in Tijuana loses his job and gets into deep trouble after a friend is shot while the agent was doing an investigation. When the agent discovers that it was he, not his friend, who was targeted for the hit, he decides to get revenge upon the Read More

Professor Beware

Actors: Phyllis Welch, Raymond Walburn, Lionel Stander, William Frawley

Synopsis: Harold Lloyd plays a professor of Egyptology, frightened by the notion that he has fallen under an ancient Egyptian curse. Lloyd has the opportunity to join an archeological expedition to search for a missing tablet that will determine his fate, but he has to travel from Los Angeles to New York Read More

Mama Runs Wild

Actors: Mary Boland, Ernest Truex, William Henry, Lynne Roberts, Max "Alibi" Terhune

Synopsis: Veteran character actors Mary Boland and Ernest Truex are aces as the stars of Republic's Mama Runs Wild. "Mama" is social-climbing Alice Summers (Boland), the wife of milquetoast Calvin Summers (Truex). When Alice accidentally causes the arrest of a bank robber, she becomes a local heroine and Read More

Ride a Crooked Mile

Actors: Akim Tamiroff, Frances Farmer, Lynne Overman, John Miljan

Synopsis: A macho Cossack immigrant to the U.S. goes West and joins a ring of rustlers. Later his son follows him to states and he too begins stealing cows. Not knowing his father very well, the youth is anxious to prove himself a manly man and a friendly rivalry develops until the father is captured and Read More

Army Girl

Actors: Madge Evans, Preston S. Foster, James Gleason, H.B. Warner, Ruth Donnelly

Synopsis: The trials faced by the US Army when it first attempted to trade horses for tanks provides the basis of this actioner. The tale centers upon the love affair between an Army post commander's daughter and a young tank specialist who is trying to prove that the new technology is better than horses. Read More

Broadway Musketeers

Actors: Margaret Lindsay, Ann Sheridan, Marie Wilson, John Litel, Janet Chapman

Synopsis: Broadway Musketeers is a remake of the 1932 Warner Bros. drama Three on a Match, with numerous concessions made to the now more stringent Hollywood censors. Brought up together in an orphanage, three young ladies-Isabel (Margaret Lindsay), Fay (Ann Sheridan) and Connie (Marie Wilson)-vow to remain Read More

Super Sleuth

Actors: Jack Oakie, Ann Sothern, Eduardo Ciannelli, Alan Bruce, Edgar Kennedy

Synopsis: Super Sleuth stars Jack Oakie as an egotistical movie actor who specializes in detective roles. Despite the gentle remonstrations of his girl friend (Ann Sothern), Oakie fancies himself a genuine master sleuth, and in this capacity offers his services to the law in helping to solve a recent series Read More

When You're in Love

Actors: Grace Moore, Cary Grant, Aline MacMahon, Henry Stephenson, Thomas Mitchell

Synopsis: In this tuneful, romantic drama, an Australian opera star (Grace Moore) wants to perform in a major U.S. festival but cannot enter the country unless she is married. To this end, she hires a handsome artist (Cary Grant) temporarily marry her. At first it is all strictly business, but in time, the Read More

Slave Ship

Actors: Warner Baxter, Wallace Beery, Elizabeth Allan, Mickey Rooney, George Sanders

Synopsis: This period adventure drama was directed by Tay Garnett and adapted from a story by William Faulkner. The skipper of a slave trading vessel operating along the West African coast in 1860, Captain Jim Lovett (Warner Baxter) is troubled by his flesh-peddling trade. He's marrying the beautiful Nancy Read More

New Faces of 1937

Actors: Joe Penner, Milton Berle, Parkyakarkus [Harry Einstein], Harriet Hilliard

Synopsis: New Faces of 1937 was supposed to be the vanguard of a series of annual musical comedies -- RKO Radio's latest attempt to revive its long-dormant "Radio City Revels" concept. The plot is based on an old show-business legend, later immortalized in Mel Brooks' The Producers: Crooked Broadway Read More

Marry the Girl

Actors: Mary Boland, Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert, Carolyn Hughes, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: The disarmingly zany Marry the Girl was one of the better Hugh Herbert "B"-vehicles for Warner Bros. Much of the story takes place within the walls of the ramshackle newspaper syndicate owned by the screwball Radway family. Purportedly the head of the operation, John B. Radway (Hugh Herbert) is Read More

The Toast of New York

Actors: Edward Arnold, Cary Grant, Frances Farmer, Jack Oakie, Donald Meek

Synopsis: Allegedly based on two factual works, Bouck White's The Book of Daniel Drew and Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons, RKO's The Toast of New York is a largely fanciful account of the career of 1870s financier "Jubilee Jim" Fisk. As played by Edward Arnold in his usual "tycoon" mode, Fisk was a Read More

Black Gold

Actors: Frankie Darro, LeRoy Mason, Gloria Shea, Berton Churchill, Stanley Fields

Synopsis: Stodgily directed by actor Russell Hopton, this low-budget oil-drilling melodrama was one of three action-adventures teaming boy actor Frankie Darro with B-Western villain LeRoy Mason, the latter changing his billing to "Roy Mason" for the occasion. Young master Darro plays Clifford Riley Read More

The Return of Jimmy Valentine

Actors: Roger Pryor, Charlotte Henry, Robert Warwick, Edgar Kennedy

Synopsis: Impressed by the popularity of radio program about the exploits of legendary safecracker Jimmy Valentine, advertising man Gary Howard (Roger Pryor) posts a huge reward for anyone who knows the whereabouts of real Valentine, who is technically still a fugitive from justice. Following a lead, Howard Read More

Poppy

Actors: W.C. Fields, Rochelle Hudson, Richard Cromwell, Lynne Overman, Catherine Doucet

Synopsis: Poppy is the film version of the Dorothy Donnelly musical comedy which made W.C. Fields a Broadway star back in 1923 (an earlier, less-faithful version, also starring Fields and retitled Sally of the Sawdust, was directed by D. W. Griffith in 1926). The Great Man is cast as Professor Eustace Read More

Love on the Run

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Reginald Owen, Mona Barrie

Synopsis: Having turned down the opportunity to produce Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), MGM's Louis B. Mayer had second thoughts when the Capra film swept the 1935 Oscars ceremony. Mayer hastily commissioned an It Happened One Night wannabe titled Love on the Run, tailored for the talents of Joan Crawford Read More

All-American Chump

Actors: Stuart Erwin, Robert Armstrong, Betty Furness, Edmund Gwenn, Harvey Stephens

Synopsis: Bucolic Elmer Lamb (Stuart Erwin), who only wants to raise dairy cattle, is a mathematical prodigy; he's even a whiz at playing bridge. Circus pitchman Bill (Robert Armstrong) and circus owner Jeffrey Crane (Edmund Gwenn) want to make money off Elmer, but Jeff's daughter Kitty (Betty Furness) Read More

Dangerous Waters

Actors: Jack Holt, Robert Armstrong, Grace Bradley, Diana Gibson, Charlie Murray

Synopsis: In this melodrama the captain of a decrepit boat must get it to port but finds that racketeers are trying to prevent him from making it by sneaking their thugs on board. The henchman are told to sink the barge and the collect upon a substantial insurance policy. They blow a large hole in the hold. Read More

Missing Girls

Actors: Roger Pryor, Muriel Evans, Sidney Blackmer, Noel Madison, Ann Doran

Synopsis: A couple of naïve girls get themselves unwittingly involved in the gambling racket in this Poverty Row production directed by the redoubtable Phil Rosen. Runaway Ann Jason (Ann Doran) finds shelter in big, bad New York City with the Traveler's Aid Society, one of those organizations run by bored Read More

Florida Special

Actors: Jack Oakie, Sally Eilers, Kent Taylor, Frances Drake, John Farrell MacDonald

Synopsis: A Florida-bound train is filled with romance and intrigue in this comedy. Among the passengers is a millionaire bon vivant carrying $1 million in diamonds. He is fully aware that a gang of would-be jewel thieves have followed him and so pretends to be an invalid with an ice bag perpetually stuck Read More

One-Run Elmer

Actors: Buster Keaton

Synopsis: Dialogue only punctuates this inventive, near-silent two-reeler starring the great Buster Keaton. He plays the titular Elmer, who operates a rickety gas station in the California desert. A rival station opens for business right across the road from him, and the rivalry becomes personal when the Read More

Palooka from Paducah

Actors: Buster Keaton, Joe Keaton, Myra Keaton, Louise Keaton

Synopsis: Buster Keaton began his career in vaudeville as a child, starring with his father Joe and mother Myra as The Three Keatons. This clever Educational two-reeler reunites the trio and adds Buster's sister Louise in the bargain. They play a family of hill folk that make moonshine but who pin their Read More

His Night Out

Actors: Edward Everett Horton, Irene Hervey, Robert McWade, Jack LaRue, Willard Robertson

Synopsis: In this rather black comedy, a nervous office worker goes to a local quack for a check up and learns that he has only three months left to live. The mild-mannered man decides that if he is going to go, he is going to go with gusto. When he finds someone has robbed his boss's safe, he decides to Read More

Behold My Wife

Actors: Sylvia Sidney, Gene Raymond, Julie Compton, Laura Hope Crewes, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: A wealthy young heir rebels when his snooty parents refuse to allow him to marry a lovely young secretary. Deciding to teach them a lesson, he goes West where he falls in love and marries the daughter of a Native American chief. He brings her home to meet his parents, who are naturally appalled Read More

Goin' to Town

Actors: Mae West, Paul Cavanagh, Gilbert Emery, Ivan Lebedeff, Tito Coral, Marjorie Gateson

Synopsis: Mae West is Goin' to Town in this elegant post-Production Code vehicle. West plays Cleo Borden, a nouveau riche cattle rancher who hopes to crash into high society. Though she is willing to subject herself to "refinement" lessons, she still has a high old time puncturing the pretensions of those Read More

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Actors: James Cagney, Ian Hunter, Grant Mitchell, Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Victor Jory, Ross Alexander, Joe E. Brown, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dick Powell

Synopsis: Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was transferred to the screen by Warner Bros. in 1935. Like most of Shakespeare's comedies, the story contains several seemingly unrelated plotlines, all tied together by a single unifying event, in this Read More

Too Tough to Kill

Actors: Victor Jory, Sally O'Neil, Thurston Hall, Johnny Arthur, Robert Gleckler

Synopsis: The construction site of a big tunnel provides the backdrop for this drama. When the project is delayed, the chief engineer is sent to the mountainous site to ensure things go as planned. He is accompanied by a reporter and her photographer. Together they stop the troublemakers before blood is Read More

Pursuit

Actors: Chester Morris, Sally Eilers, Scotty Beckett, Henry Travers

Synopsis: Cruelly separated from his mother (Dorothy Peterson), little Donald McCoy (Scotty Beckett) is being robbed of his childhood by greedy relatives. Taking pity on the boy, pilot Mitchell (Chester Morris) "kidnaps" the kid and sets out to return him to his mom. Detective Maxine (Sally Eilers) Read More

Murder on the Campus

Actors: Shirley Grey, Charles Starrett, John Farrell MacDonald, Ruth Hall, Dewey Robinson

Synopsis: Two popular film genres were combined by low-budget Chestefield Films in 1934, and the result was Murder on the Campus. Hotshot reporter Bill Bartlett (Charles Starrett) wants to get to the bottom of things when three murders are committed at a co-educational college. In the nastiest of the Read More

The Cat's Paw

Actors: Harold Lloyd, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Nat Pendleton, Grace Bradley

Synopsis: Harold Lloyd plays Ezekial Cobb, a missionary's son who has spent his entire life in China. Cobb is sent to his father's home church in California, where it is hoped he will find a wife. A true babe in the woods, Cobb is befriended by politician Jake Mayo (George Barbier). Mayo is a cog in a Read More

Notorious But Nice

Actors: Marian Marsh, Betty Compson, Rochelle Hudson

Synopsis: A lover selflessly dumps her boy friend so that he will obey the wishes of his wealthy benefactor and marry someone more suitable. If he fails to marry an approved woman, his wealthy guardian will no longer pair for his support. Meanwhile, the heartbroken lover ends up marrying a creepy gambler. Read More

Student Tour

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Charles Butterworth, Maxine Doyle, Phil Regan, Florine McKinney

Synopsis: Student Tour looks like an MGM musical two-reeler that was expanded to feature length as it went along. Charles Butterworth and Jimmy Durante are teamed respectively as fey philosophy professor Lippincott and brash athletic coach Hank. The two comics shepherd a co-ed college rowing team on a world Read More

George White's Scandals

Actors: George White, Rudy Vallee, Alice Faye, Jimmy Durante, Dixie Dunbar, Gregory Ratoff, Adrienne Ames

Synopsis: Legendary Broadway impresario George White made his Hollywood debut with this musical, which he wrote, co-directed, and starred in as himself. Reporter Miss Lee (Gertrude Michael) is looking for a story and approaches White as he's assembling the latest edition of his famous revue. As it turns Read More

The Merry Widow

Actors: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel, George Barbier

Synopsis: Ernst Lubitsch directs the 1934 musical comedy The Merry Widow, based on the 1905 operetta by Franz Lehar. In 1885, King Achmed (George Barbier) strives to protect the financial interests of his small, poor kingdom of Marshovia in Central Europe. When the kingdom's wealthiest widow, Sonia (Jeanette MacDonald Read More

The Big Shakedown

Actors: Charles Farrell, Bette Davis, Ricardo Cortez, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: An idealistic but naive pharmacist believes the mobsters who claim they want him to manufacture illegal medicine to help out the poor. That the deal will pad his own pockets with much-needed cash only sweetens the arrangement. This melodrama chronicles the tragic results of his actions. He wants Read More

Shadows of Sing Sing

Actors: Mary Brian, Bruce Cabot, Grant Mitchell, Harry Woods, Claire Du Brey

Synopsis: Assistant DA Bob Martel (Bruce Cabot) is in love with sweet Muriel (Mary Brian). This in itself is not earth-shattering, except that Muriel is the sister of gangster boss Rossi (Harry Woods). The latter frames Martel for murder, but the police forensics lab provides a surprising solution to his Read More

The Devil's in Love

Actors: Victor Jory, Loretta Young, Vivienne Osborne, David Manners, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: The French Foreign Legion is the setting for this episodic adventure yarn. Victor Jory plays a Legion doctor falsely accused of murdering his commander over the love of Loretta Young. Jory escapes prosecution by heading for parts unknown, but when a deadly illness strikes his old fort, he returns Read More

The Little Giant

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Helen Vinson, Ken Thomson, Shirley Grey

Synopsis: The end of prohibition spells the end of business as usual for Chicago gangster Bugs Ahearn (Edward G. Robinson in this delightful spoof of mob melodramas from Warner Bros. Paying off their latest moll, Edith (Shirley Grey, Bugs and chief lieutenant Al Daniels (Russell Hopton) grab their Read More

Diplomaniacs

Actors: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Marjorie White, Phyllis Barry, Louis Calhern

Synopsis: Two barbers from an Indian reservation (Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey) are sent as the delegates of the Adoop tribe to an international peace convention in Geneva. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Bureau of Missing Persons

Actors: Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Pat O'Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Although claiming to be based on actual cases, this mild crime drama appears to have been derived more from a screenwriter's manual than a police blotter. Newly transferred from robbery to missing persons, glib Butch Saunders (Pat O'Brien) is like the proverbial bull in a china shop at first, but Read More

Lawyer Man

Actors: William Powell, Joan Blondell, Helen Vinson, Alan Dinehart, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: William Powell is a poor East Side lawyer who works his way up the ladder to assistant prosecutor. He isn't too particular how he uses and misuses the law, much to the dismay of his faithful secretary (Joan Blondell). Powell's downfall comes when he falls for a shady lady (Claire Dodd) who Read More

Women Won't Tell

Actors: Sarah Padden, Otis Harlan, Gloria Shea, Larry Kent, Edmund Breese

Lady Killer

Actors: James Cagney, Mae Clarke, Leslie Fenton, Margaret Lindsay, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: We first lay eyes on Jimmy Cagney in Lady Killer while he's working as a movie theater usher. This job lasts just long enough for Jimmy to be swindled in a "badger game" orchestrated by hard-boiled Mae Clarke and a gang of crooks headed by Douglass Dumbrille. Knowing a good thing when he sees it, Cagney Read More

Her Forgotten Past

Actors: Monte Blue, Barbara Kent, William V. Mong

Synopsis: Her Forgotten Past was released by Mayfair Studios, meaning that all the characters suffer in evening clothes in a handful of interior sets. Eddie Phillips plays the villain, the lowborn chauffeur of highborn Barbara Kent. She marries him on an impulse then lives to regret it. When Phillips is Read More

She Done Him Wrong

Actors: Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland, Rafaela Ottiano

Synopsis: "I'm the finest woman who walked the streets," declares bejeweled, hip-swishing Lady Lou (Mae West) at the beginning of She Done Him Wrong. Lou works as a singer at the Gay Nineties saloon of Gus Jordan (Noah Beery Sr.), who plies her with diamonds to keep her by his side. She runs afoul of Read More

A Lady's Profession

Actors: Alison Skipworth, Roland Young, Sara Maritza, Kent Taylor, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: A couple of down-and-out British aristocrats buy an American roadhouse in this uproarious farce from Paramount. Naming the establishment after their estate in the old country, Twicket-on-Topping, Lady Beulah (Alison Skipworth) and her brother Sir Reginald (Roland Young) run afoul of American Read More

Laughing at Life

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Conchita Montenegro, Lois Wilson, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: At first concentrating exclusively on westerns and serials, up-and-coming Mascot Pictures began branching out in the early 1930s with such lavish star vehicles as Laughing at Life. Victor McLaglen is in his element as a devil-may-care globetrotting adventurer named McHale. After risking his neck Read More

Soldiers of the Storm

Actors: Regis Toomey, Anita Page, Barbara Weeks, Robert Ellis, Wheeler Oakman

Synopsis: Much of this exciting crime drama is set aboard an airplane in which a brave hero does battle with a gang of smugglers. Meanwhile, the hero's girl friend joins the gang, but later quits before they are arrested and imprisoned. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Heroes for Sale

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Loretta Young, Aline MacMahon, Gordon Westcott, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: What isn't Heroes for Sale about? Within its 71-minute time frame, this film (co-written by "professional cynic" Wilson Mizner) tackles such issues as disenfranchised war veterans, misguided hero worship, drug addiction, the Depression, capitalism, labor relations and communism. Richard Barthelmess Read More

The Woman from Monte Carlo

Actors: Lil Dagover, Walter Huston, Warren William, John Wray, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In this WW II drama, the commander of the French cruiser Lafayette is sunk by a German U-boat. Following the rescue of the survivors, the commander undergoes an investigative hearing to determine his culpability in the sinking. He didn't know it at the time, but his philandering young wife was Read More

Scarlet Dawn

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Nancy Carroll, Earl Foxe, Lilyan Tashman, Sheila Terry

Synopsis: The Russian Revolution provides the backdrop of this costume epic that centers around a young nobleman who, with his maid, escapes from his homeland to Constantinople where the two marry and begin a new life as commoners. But though it seemed a good idea at the time, the aristocrat has trouble Read More

One Way Passage

Actors: William Powell, Kay Francis, Frank McHugh, Aline MacMahon, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: William Powell plays a condemned murderer who is being transported from Hong Kong to San Quentin by way of a luxury liner. Also on board is the lovely Kay Francis, who is suffering from a fatal heart condition. The sympathetic detective (Warren Hymer) escorting Powell allows the prisoner to roam Read More

Law and Order

Actors: Walter Huston, Harry Carey, Raymond Hatton, Russell Simpson, Russell Hopton

Synopsis: An early screen version of the oft-filmed tale of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Law and Order was adapted by young screenwriter John Huston from W. R. Burnett's novel, which alters the names of the principals but few of the facts. The film opens with a montage of Read More

If I Had a Million

Actors: Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, W.C. Fields, Charlie Ruggles, George Raft, Jack Oakie

Synopsis: Based on a story by Robert Andrews, If I Had a Million is a multipart comedy-drama employing Paramount's top directorial and acting talents. Refusing to leave his fortune to his grasping relatives, dying millionaire Richard Bennett selects several people at random from the phone book and bestows Read More

Painted Woman

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Peggy Shannon, William "Stage" Boyd, Raul Roulien

Synopsis: Set in exotic Singapore, this crime drama centers on a nightclub singer whose life is torn asunder when she is implicated in a murder. Though her involvement was purely accidental, she flees to the harbor where she deceives her ship captain fiance into allowing her passage. They set sail. When he Read More

Hat Check Girl

Actors: Sally Eilers, Ben Lyon, Ginger Rogers, Monroe Owsley, Arthur Pierson

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Rian James, Hat Check Girl stars Sally Eilers as the title character, a pert little number named Gerry Marsh. Despite her lowly station in life, Gerry manages to fall in love with millionaire playboy Buster Collins (Ben Lyon). The fly in the ointment is blackmailing newspaper Read More

Blonde Venus

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Dickie Moore, Gene Morgan, Francis Sayles

Synopsis: Marlene Dietrich stars as Helen Faraday, a German cabaret singer in the States whose husband, Ned, falls ill and his only hope is to receive expensive medical treatment at a clinic in Europe. Struggling to afford his care and to support their son Johnny, she works at a nightclub and succumbs to Read More

The Big Broadcast

Actors: Stuart Erwin, Bing Crosby, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Sharon Lynne, George Barbier, Leila Hyams

Synopsis: This early musical is a bit slim on story but features a number of vintage performances by a stellar cast, including some of the most popular radio stars of the day. George (George Burns) manages a radio station that is on the brink of bankruptcy. Leslie McWhinney (Stuart Erwin), a carefree Read More

Cheaters at Play

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Charlotte Greenwood, William Bakewell, Ralph Morgan, Barbara Weeks

Synopsis: This crime drama chronicles the relationship between a jewel thief who has gone straight and his estranged son who is determined to be a criminal. The story is set aboard a ship. The ex-thief is hunting for $375,000 worth of stolen pearls. He also tries vainly to prevent his son from becoming a Read More

Six Hours to Live

Actors: Warner Baxter, John Boles, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: In this off-beat sci-fi film, an outspoken diplomat is murdered during an international trade conference. This is a terrible blow for his native country because the ambassador had come to stop his country from signing a treaty that would allow their enemy to exploit them. To prevent this from Read More

Enemies of the Law

Actors: Mary Nolan, Johnny Walker, Lou Tellegen, Harold Healy, Alan Brooks

Synopsis: This shoddy "B"-picture represents one of the few talkie appearances by former Broadway matinee idol Lou Tellegen. Mary Nolan heads the cast as lady cop Florence Vinton, who goes undercover to get the goods on rival gangsters Eddie Swan (Tellegen) and Larry Marsh (Johnny Walker). Just at the point Read More